Six o’clock saw us surging into action, and by half-past, we were showered, shaved (at least I was) but not shampooed and ready for the Continental breakfast downstairs.
It’s hardly a scientific approach, but checking the levels of the spreads available for the morning toast revealed a preference for orange marmalade with, believe it or not, Vegemite sneaking into second place ahead of strawberry jam.
Peanut butter finished a distant (and, in my humble opinion quite understandable) last.
A survey of adjacent tables showed a similar level of depletion in the stocks of Vegemite, scotching any suspicions that the table we were occupying had already attracted an unusual number of Australian chauvinists eager to indulge in leftover brewers’ yeast.
This posed an interesting question to ponder while waiting for a boarding call for the flight to Japan.
I assumed supplies started at around the same level when the bistro opened for breakfast.
Presumably, the sole employee on duty filled the receptacles to the top each morning as part of her duties. I couldn’t see that there was all that much she would need to do apart from that.
I felt that it was also reasonably safe to assume that there wouldn’t have been too many dinkum Aussies in the crowd that had passed through the breakfast area before us.
More than likely, the previous clients would have been backpackers or tourists grabbing a bite to eat before heading off on a day tour of the Daintree or a white-water rafting expedition in the mountains between Cairns and Tully.
Anyone partaking in these pastimes might be looking at maximising their Australian experience. Still, observations of overseas reactions to Vegemite suggests that, for most foreign visitors, once is more than enough.
So what happened to all the Vegemite?
I had visions of overseas visitors surreptitiously sneaking sachets of the substance into their pockets, intending to smuggle them back home as evidence of the Australian lack of sophisticated taste.
And, Muriel, can you imagine? They spread THIS on their morning toast! What strange people...
It gave me something to ponder while we were waiting.
By seven-thirty, we were on our way to the airport and Hughesy’s first encounter with the vagaries of international travel.
Arriving at the International Terminal, I was mildly bemused by the lack of activity.
A few people were being checked in, a tour guide was marshalling a group of Japanese tourists outside the check-in area, and there were a couple of terminals occupied by staff waiting for the arrival of customers.
No waiting, no delay.
‘Er Indoors, being quite the experienced traveller, must have been looking forward with considerable amusement to watching the fun as Hughesy tackled the various administrative procedures before embarkation.
That was more than likely her motivation for allowing me to hand over my passport first.
And everything went smoothly.
Once the Japanese passport came into play, matters became somewhat more complicated.
Our operator required assistance, first from the terminal next door, and then a supervisor appeared on the scene, followed by further assistance from higher up the echelon.
In the end, it was, we gathered, some minor glitch or typographical error - a zero entered as letter O or some such.
Several years ago I took great joy in describing my version of what happened when a lone traveller on her way back to Japan left an unattended bag in the midst of a Japanese tour group while she made use of the conveniences. She returned to find the group had moved on, and an unattended bag was the subject of serious scrutiny from the security staff.
However we’ve been warned about the inadvisability of joking about security issues in areas like check-in counters, so I was forced to give the flick pass to such potential rib-ticklers as That’s funny. It should have worked. Surely the ink’s dry by now.
Once we were passed that little hurdle, it was a case of up the stairs, around the corner and through Immigration where my previously pristine passport received its first exit stamp.
There was still ninety minutes to kill before boarding, and the area was almost totally deserted when we walked through Security and ‘Er Indoors once again attracted the attention of the guy with the little wand that scans you for traces of explosives.
Over the last dozen times, when we’ve passed through a security set-up, I’ve walked straight past the individual in question while the strike rate where ‘Er Indoors is concerned in something like 50%.
Lack of crowds meant that we were the only customers in sight when we walked into the duty-free store, making a predictable beeline for the wine department.
It wasn’t as if we were necessarily looking to buy anything. There were three bottles of Rutherglen Tokay tucked away as presents, and I didn’t fancy the prospect of lugging extra weight around as we made our way around the Land of the Rising Sun.
On the other hand, I thought it would be interesting to see what was on offer.
While I suspected the usual Aussie wine icons would feature prominently, I suspected that we might encounter a couple of items that you wouldn’t usually be able to find at your local liquor outlet.
When we visit the Lolly Shop, we are usually looking to restock the wine rack with value for money wines. When we do venture into the quality section, we tend to head towards areas where we’ll find something from a winery we’ve visited.
I have no idea if Jacob's Creek Steingarten Riesling is widely available or if it’s a label that has somehow managed to slip past without attracting my attention.
The Steingarten vineyard was something I remembered reading about back in the mid-seventies when I was just starting to get interested in wine. It was a relatively high-altitude vineyard with a gravelly soil (Steingarten translates as stone garden) which had been developed and planted to produce something approaching a German-style Riesling.
Interesting, I thought and proceeded with further investigations.
Since the first night in Kōbe’s accommodation was a 4.5-star establishment with water views, I started to think perhaps a nice bottle of red might be a suitable way of celebrating our arrival as we looked out over Kōbe’s harbour.
A bottle of Steingarten in the backpack wouldn’t be that much extra weight.
I’d run across references to Heathcote as one of the emerging wine regions in Victoria but hadn’t (as far as I can recall, and Hughesy’s memory can be a most unreliable conveyance) tasted anything from there. I selected a Brown Brothers Heathcote Shiraz.
From the Limited release label, it wasn’t a wine I’d be likely to run into at the local bottle-o.
From there, I found myself a comfortable seat and devoted myself to writing up the previous twenty-four hours while ‘Er Indoors indulged herself with a wander around the shopping options.
Once the call came, boarding went smoothly, but some difficulty in the luggage compartment downstairs meant that the load needed re-stowing, delaying our departure by half an hour or so.
While we were taking stock of this development, an announcement - first in English, then in Japanese - advised the temperature on the ground at Kansai was a far-from-comfortable eight degrees Celsius. Obviously, the majority of the passengers, being Japanese, either tend to zone out while the English version of such announcements goes across, preferring to wait till they can get the information in their preferred tongue or else they just don’t understand English.
If that sounds like I’m being uncharitable, when the English announcement concluded, ‘Er Indoors and I discussed the need to adjust our luggage to counter extremes of temperature. We'd just finished when the Japanese version of the same information went across, resulting in a noticeable shudder from the majority of the plane’s population.
Looking back, we decided the announcement was a tactical move to provide those on board with something to talk about. Or, if travelling alone to occupy the mind while the rearrangements were happening down below.
Once we were in the air, there was nothing for it but to sit back and try to find something to occupy the mind over the flight’s seven and a half hour duration.
Under normal circumstances, I’d have a book to read and with the iPod supplying a suitable soundtrack that would be quite sufficient.
But since I was carrying one book that needed to last me for a bit over two weeks, the time from take-off to touch-down was spent toggling between various modes.
Customs paperwork, reading, writing the Travelogue, eating, meditating on various subjects, listening to the iPod - and despite predictions from certain quarters, I found enough variety to prevent the time from dragging unduly.
Once a wave of excitement went through the group of homeward-bound home-stay students in front of us as land came into sight, we were able to spend the rest of the flight trying to figure out exactly where we were.
That wasn’t as easy as you might think, given the haze that covered most of the visible countryside. We were looking towards the afternoon sun, which didn’t help matters much. But as we approached ever closer to Kansai International (KIX in Airport Code - KAN was probably allocated to Kansas City), ‘Er Indoors spotted more and more familiar landmarks until, eventually, we were over Osaka Bay on final approach.
Once we landed, a lengthy taxi took us around three sides of the terminal to the disembarkation point. The air bridge delivered us into the building and, by the straightforward approach of following those in front of us we ended up on the monorail that carried us down to the inevitable encounter with Customs and Immigration
Among Hughesy’s circle of acquaintances, it’s frequently been noted that from time to time you wander into the local Post Office to find yourself on the end of a very long queue. Almost invariably, by the time you’ve made your way to the counter and concluded your business, the previously lengthy queue is now totally non-existent.
In most cases, apart from the Post Office staff, you tend to find you’re the only person in the building.
I had no idea the same principle applied in international airports.
Arriving in the Immigration Hall, ‘Er Indoors (of course) headed for the Japanese-passport-holders’ section, where her entry to her homeland proceeded without incident. Then she settled down to wait for Yours Truly.
For my part, I attached myself to the end of a queue comprising, at a rough guess, several hundred people. Part of the problem was the fact that our flight was half an hour late. If it had been on time, I guess I would have found myself in front of people who were now in front of me.
As the serpentine line inched towards the processing area, we passed large notices advising that, as of late last year, all foreigners entering Japan needed to be fingerprinted and photographed.
In some cases, the procedure seemed to take a couple of seconds. Eventually, I found myself second in line from the processing point. I was looking forward to whatever lay on the other side of the barriers, but the guy in front of me seemed to encounter all sorts of obstacles.
If I didn’t spend five minutes waiting for the opportunity to move into another spot presented itself, it certainly felt like five minutes.
Over forty-five minutes or so standing in line, it seemed there only had been a single international flight arrive. I watched as a handful of passengers who’d arrived after me disappeared towards the baggage carousel while I waited for a vacancy to allow me to shift to another line.
Eventually, I found my way through another processing point, headed down, collected the luggage and passed straight through the rest of the process in no time flat.
Faced with revealed form, one would have expected further delays from the airport to the hotel, but we arrived at the shuttle bus departure point with about five minutes to spare. Since the rush hour was well and truly past the scheduled sixty-five minute trip to downtown Kōbe took more or less the advertised time span.
‘Er Indoors, for some reason, decided to install us on the port side of the bus, generously allowing me the window seat. That meant the first half of the journey had us passing dock-lands, skirting industrial estates and crossing waterways on the port side while the other side looked over the fairyland twinkle of a major conurbation.
In fact, it was some forty minutes after we started when I spotted the first conspicuous residential building on our side of the bus.
I was just reflecting that one dockland/industrial area around the world must look just like any other one when you removed the neon signs (and the neon signs were conspicuous by their absence at the time) when a voice from beside me said:
Look over there - that’s Osaka Castle.
At which time, I sent an urgent email to myself.
Self. Next time we take this trip we sit on the starboard side of the bus.
Alighting from the bus at Sannomiya, Kōbe’s main rail terminal and the hub of several transport options it took us a few minutes to locate the departure point for the next shuttle bus, which would transfer us to the Meriken Park Oriental Hotel.
Since the next bus was due in about five minutes, that gave us time for a brief debate about the night’s eating arrangements.
There were a couple of options close at hand, but I felt that if we went for a look, we might well miss the bus and face a half-hour wait.
On the other hand, we'd had a substantial meal the previous night and snacks on the plane. The beef rendang and a pastrami sandwich were both considerably better than my limited experiences with airline food suggested they were likely to be. So it wouldn’t do us all that much harm if we failed to find an acceptable snack option at the hotel.
And if we were going to go hungry, there was a bottle of Heathcote Shiraz to deaden the pangs.
Once the shuttle had delivered us to the hotel, we were checked in, offered an impressive explanation of the breakfast options and handed over to a porter, who conducted us to our room.
Arriving outside the door, our friendly porter embarked on a lengthy demonstration of the correct use of the key card.
That might have been understandable if the explanation was in English and directed towards a hairy foreigner. But it was in Japanese, directed at ‘Er Indoors who’d been privileged to receive a similar, somewhat shorter, explanation downstairs.
It seemed somewhat pointless, except as an exercise in repeated bi-directional courtesies.
Once inside the room, he proceeded to repeat at length the explanation of the breakfast options we’d already received at the check-in counter, before graciously withdrawing.
Throughout this process, I was left alone to ponder that this guy bore a remarkable resemblance in the mannerism department to a certain ex-pupil known in Year Four circles as Harry Houdini.
When I mentioned this resemblance to ‘Er Indoors, the look I received in return suggested further significant evidence had been added to the prosecution brief in the case of The Crown versus Hughesy’s Sanity.
After a few minutes taking in the view across the harbour, a chance encounter with the room service menu revealed the availability of various reasonably-priced snacks. So we ventured downstairs and ended up with a club sandwich and a fruit parfait which provided the stomach lining we needed when we attacked the Shiraz, which we’d left quietly breathing upstairs.
And charming it was, too.
Lights Out was some time after eleven, but with a midday checkout and the prospect of a substantial buffet breakfast in the morning, the lateness of the hour was never going to be an issue.